Joining us for episode 44 of Talent & Growth was Chad Sowash one half of HR’s most dangerous podcast, Chad & Cheese. 

In the episode we covered what should our tech stack look like for hiring, what sort of recruitment marketing strategies show we be focusing on and the title for this blog, how should our tech stack affect the candidate experience, read on to find out what Chad had to say on the matter. 

Let’s say that we’ve got our tech stack correct. How should this affect the candidate experience? 

First and foremost, it should be about the candidate experience, then the recruiter experience. It’s harder today, at least it is here in the US, to find recruiters than it is to find software developers. This has led to recruiters now being pickier about the different types of positions that they take, because they can. No recruiter wants to be in a position where they have 30,000 tabs open and completing an endless list of menial tasks; they want to be able to be more human.  

Generally, recruiters get into the sector because they like people and want to be able to help people find the next job or that sought after career that really pushes them forward. Recruiters care. But, it’s hard to care when you don’t have enough time to personally deal with the candidate and make connections.  

So, at the very least, it should be incredibly easy for a candidate to give you their information. Question whether you still need clients to create an account. It’s no longer 1999 and people make purchases online every day as a “guest” to avoid inputting information to create an account. Your candidates will be giving you their information anyway through uploading their resume or CV. Make this initial process as painless as possible.  

Next, consider the experience of the recruiter. We begin to talk about scale and have individuals voicing concerns that they will have too many candidates. That is, once again, why you should be imploding your current process and taking a look at new tech stack. If the tech is right, it should be able to ask the right questions (but not too many) to push out the individuals who do not meet the requirements, then prospectively ask them if they want to apply for something where they do meet the requirements.  

But at this point we are still speaking in linear terms – talking about one job, one application process, one recruiter. But that’s the wrong way of looking at things. All of these candidates are being thrown into a black hole; it is our job to focus on their experience and maybe not getting them the job that they initially applied for, but helping them to discover what other opportunities they could be an ideal applicant for. We help them to see the many specks of light that are out there. Looking at it from the recruiter side, we again focus on the recruiter experience. You need to ensure that you are giving them something where they can be more human and do what they really yearn to do- help people. If you’re not allowing them to do this, you could lose them. 

If you’d like to hear more from Chad you can check out the full episode here. 

On Talent & Growth we speak to talent leaders about the challenges they face and their solutions for attraction and retention. If you’re interested in hearing about how companies are building a more diverse talent pool, how you can attract top people from the big players, ways to create a more inclusive interview process or learn about the latest and greatest automation software to make your life easier, then this is the podcast for you.